


please don't make any sudden moves

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [110]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Disabled Character, Gen, Mentally Ill Character, Natasha's Psychological Expertise, Perfume, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 15:06:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11946792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: Around about the time Tasha physically steals his phone out of his pocket, Steve has to actually admit to himself - and by necessity to Natasha - that he's not handling this very well.





	please don't make any sudden moves

**Author's Note:**

> Runs parallel to [lending a hand](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11221326). 
> 
> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it.

Around about the time Tasha physically steals his phone out of his pocket, Steve has to actually admit to himself - and by necessity to Natasha - that he's not handling this very well. 

Not because she feels the need to steal his phone, as such. But because of how angry and how panicked he feels when he realizes she's done it, that he didn't notice, and that - judging by the way she stopped walking when he did and by the way she now has her arms folded and her head tilted to one side, wearing a bland and speculative expression - she's not going to give it back. 

At least not without him . . .demanding it and being serious. Actually making it a fight. Letting himself be as angry as he briefly feels. 

She can be really, really God-damned annoying like this. 

They're about four hundred meters from the subway. It's a nice day, if a bit chilly, enough that Steve grabbed a light jacket to go out because he'll draw attention if he doesn't. He can feel the prickle on his skin. Natasha's got a jean-jacket on over a tunic-length shirt, leggings and ankle-boots. 

Tasha always looks good, but this kind of look is one of the ones Steve likes best on her. Mostly because it means she feels comfortable enough to project that kind of comfortable-unremarkable, even around people she'd have to be lying to if she weren't really that comfortable. Which is one hell of a convoluted thought and one that would have given Steve a headache even two years ago, but seems completely sensible now. 

Her hair is short again, even shorter than he's seen it before. It had made it all the way down past her shoulders, but apparently she had a bit of a moment at it while in Berlin on a consult and came back to New York with an asymmetrical cut: left side chin-length, right side just long enough to tuck behind her ear. It's probably the most distinctive cut Steve's ever seen on her, an oddly vivid Statement that she's not going to be doing any pretense at being someone else (at least, none that stop short of a full face-distortion and other disguises at that level). 

It's a bit odd, for him, the way most of the women's hairstyles like that are, but it looks fine. And he likes what he tentatively thinks it means. He's getting used to that kind of thing. Even piercings are starting to pass by without making him wince. 

No, now what's making him grind his teeth is the way Natasha's eyebrows are up in a kind of interested-but-neutral challenge. Just like she is, in fact, waiting for him to either be a grouchy asshole about the phone, or to see if he's going to admit that he's been obsessively checking it and texting Clint and chewing on the inside of his cheek, obsessively glancing at the message thread with Bucky since they left the condo, and that's . . . not good. 

And that this completely, positively proves that she was right, is right, and he _shouldn't_ be at the vet clinic with Bucky because this level of agitation and worry, from him - Hell. He couldn't hide this from . . . he fumbles as his head tries to go for someone he knows to work as an example, trips, and settles on Mercedes' mom - he couldn't hide this from Clara, let alone his best friend. And it would end up in the worst kind of reinforcing cycle. 

She's just _waiting_. 

Steve stands still for a minute. He sort of bites his tongue inside his mouth, as much to force his jaw to relax (so he doesn't bite _through_ his tongue) as anything, and glances at the sidewalk (in need of a quick power-wash right here) and then up at the sky (mostly clear). 

Natasha waits, switching the tilt of her head to the other side. 

"Okay, you know what?" Steve says, admitting defeat with as much grace as he can dredge up - not that it's much. "Fine. Fine, you keep it." 

He manages to stop himself from finishing with _whatever you want_ , because that's approaching embarrassing and drops his hands from his waist, where he hadn't actually realized he'd put them. Probably so that they didn't open and close or anything else, because well - speaking of embarrassing . . .

Actually that'd probably top the list of immediately available "embarrassing", and Steve makes himself stop thinking about it. 

Tasha's eyebrows go up a little more, admitting some surprise. So there's that, at least. Steve gestures at the subway. "Are we going?" he demands. "Or are we going to stand here all day talking with our faces?" 

It's a good line and he wishes he hadn't just wasted it on a petty, childish temper tantrum. But that's life sometimes. 

Steve's about halfway down the cement stairs before he manages to rein himself in that much more, forcing himself to shorten his stride down from that of a tall person being an asshole to someone just short of a foot shorter than him. He makes himself take a deep breath so he can say, "Sorry," when Natasha does catch up. 

"I know," she says, and Steve sometimes thinks it might be easier if he weren't surrounded by people who were so God-damned _understanding_ all the time. 

The thought immediately pulls up an echo of Bucky demanding if he, Steve, could stop being so fucking reasonable. Then a mental voice that sounds suspiciously _like_ Bucky's suggests that this is what he and Tony keep each other around for . . . and Steve decides that line of thought is going to be really unproductive in the "not being a surly jerk" department. 

Besides, Tony just manages to combine understanding _with_ obnoxious, dismissive and thoughtless, which isn't much better. 

Natasha gives him a look that says she's reading his mind, or more likely his body-language, and says, "I'm honestly impressed, Steve. I am. I expected to have a fight with you about that." 

Maybe it makes him feel a bit better; maybe it doesn't. Steve actually can't tell. 

"Don't think it's not taking an effort," he mutters, and mostly puts up with it when she drops back one step to let him take the last of the stairs to the level floor in front of her, making it easier for her to muss his hair. After all, she _could_ be sincerely sympathetic right now, except they both know it'd be . . .worse. 

Self-awareness, Steve reflects and not for the first time, can be a real damned downer. 

He thinks about saying, "I just - " but he can't think of anything he could finish the sentence with that she doesn't already know, some of it probably even better than he does. So instead he sighs, mentally shakes himself and says, "Where are we going, anyway?" 

He forgot to ask, when they left. He'd been a bit distracted. 

"Montclair, New Jersey," Natasha replies, and then she laughs at him. "Nice face, Steve. Remember, America does include New Jersey, even if it hurts part of your soul." 

"I'd try to find out what the Russian equivalent of the New York-New Jersey thing is," Steve complains, "but it still wouldn't matter. Okay, _why_ are we going to Montclair, New Jersey?" 

"I'm going to visit Nadeen," Natasha says. "She's the one I buy the soap and stuff from. You're coming along so you don't get into trouble." Tasha smiles at him, brightly, and Steve fights the desire to . . . he doesn't know. Say something mean. He's not even sure what. 

The smile shifts from bright-fake-teasing to the one that can't be summed up in a glib way, but has amusement and sympathy and the kind of sympathy that comes from literally being where he is right now and acknowledgement. So what Steve does actually say is, "You know, you have incredibly complicated expressions." 

"I'm very good at talking with my face," Natasha agrees, and it's not even _deadpan_ it's just natural - so now Steve manages to give up and laughs, slightly, as they sit down. 

"I'm sorry," he says, this time more an expression of regret over being a jerk. Before it'd been more the obligation of admitting to the wrong; now it's a sigh that wants to let it go. "I just - " he opens one hand. 

"It'll be fine," she says. She crosses one leg over the other knee. 

Steve is _not_ unaware of the irony behind him asking, but he gives her a sideways look and asks her anyway. "And if it's not?" 

"You'll have a psychological disaster to handle over the week, a veterinarian and her receptionist will have tense and possibly terrifying afternoon, Clint will need to get drunk and extemporize and I will probably have to listen to how this is all Stalin's fault without telling him to shut up, and life will go on," she replies, matter-of-fact. 

When she catches Steve's sidelong look, she shrugs. "Steve, he didn't kill anyone when he spent most of every day dropping in and out of mild psychosis. He didn't even hurt _you_ , back when I swear every time you sneezed had to triggering a major PTSD episode like an IED inside his skull. The only time he's ever so much as _bruised_ you it's been waking up in the middle of the night, and even then it's never more than that. So no, I'm not worried. Even if shit goes completely to Hell, James will break some stuff, _maybe_ throw Clint across the room, disappear, and then you'll have to clean up the mess afterwards. It won't be fun but it won't be the end of the world, either." 

She pauses and a slightly bleak smile flickers across her face before she adds, "For our values of not-the-end-of-the-world." Then her look turns level and she says, "Trust me." 

Steve has figured out that trick. The trick where he told her he trusted her and then if she does _this_ it reminds part of him and he sort of does out of a knee-jerk and probably not that sensible drive to prove something to himself, or to her, or something. He's figured out that his hind-brain does know it, and that she figured it out and figured out it worked. 

It just doesn't stop working just because he's figured it out. 

"Do you ever get tired of being right?" he says, but he does manage to make it almost entirely joking. 

"Not really," Natasha replies, equably, and Steve sighs and throws up his hands in some pretense at surrender. 

"Okay fine, change subject," he says, "how did you meet Nadeen anyway?" 

"Remember the mess in Paris two months before Insight?" Natasha asks, giving him the redirect without even teasing. Steve actually has to stop because honestly, if he's not paying close attention it's really easy for the months before Insight to fade into a kind of undifferentiated morass of grey discontented irrelevance. 

This time, though, even after he thinks about it he has to ask, "Which one?" 

"The one in the Louvre," Natasha says, "that we had to pass off as - " 

" - a domestic violence murder attempt," Steve says, "right, I remember." 

That one hadn't actually been Natasha's: it'd gone wrong the day before and she'd been put on-site as containment if it kept going wrong, with Steve on standby if it got _really_ bad. Nobody'd been happy about that. 

It'd gone wrong, but it hadn't gotten that bad. She'd salvaged it, barely. The agent in question got demoted and removed from fieldwork, and Steve can't help remembering that said agent is also dead. 

Body recovered from the wreckage of the Triskelion. 

He doesn't say anything about that. When it comes to remembering people and then remembering they're bodies, Steve considers himself firmly on the Support side of the equation. There are a handful of people he'd even got to know enough to miss; for Tasha, Clint, and especially for Maria, it's like being gut-kicked every time. He knows that. 

"Nadeen was the civillian who got knocked over and out of her wheelchair," Natasha says. 

"The chair you ended up using for cover?" Steve remembers Sitwell swearing under his breath at that moment, and at least that point of horrified apprehension had probably been genuine. Nobody would have benefitted from that mess getting out of hand. 

"On the one hand we had to replace it," Natasha replies, by way of agreement, "but on the other hand it did stop the bullet. I was impressed." 

Steve rolls his eyes. "And _I'm_ the one with a recklessly indifferent attitude to personal danger," he mock-grumbles. Natasha gives him a very Patient look. 

"It would only have hit my calf and all my other options were worse," she says, tolerantly. "Anyway, Nadeen was on holiday, her French wasn't great, and we couldn't locate the friend she was travelling with for hours, so I went to the hospital with her to make sure there wasn't anything worse than bruises. Nice girl. We ended up talking about perfumes and scents for about six hours while she tried not to have panic attacks about being in the hospital in a foreign country where she didn't speak the language and her travelling companion was AWOL because _she_ was running around with only marginally better French trying to figure out where Nadeen was and what happened."

He doesn't say anything about that, about Natasha deciding looking after the woman was her job, but Steve knows he's half smiling. Instead he says, "Bad way to end a holiday." 

"On the upside the compensation deal let her put the down-payment on her townhouse," Natasha replies, "but yeah, it maybe turned her off international travel. She sent me a little packet of shampoo and body-wash and so on with a thank-you card a few months later. They were all made to her hand-blend of scents and I really liked them, so I kept in touch. It was nice," she notes, " _is_ nice, to have stuff like that where I know it's not going to remind me of being anyone else." 

After letting the silence be thoughtful for a couple of minutes, Steve does in fact end up feeling compelled to allow, "She makes pretty nice stuff," even if it's like he's comprehensively and conclusively losing the argument he's actually taken a lot of care to _never actually have_ with Natasha - the one about the incident with her breaking in, throwing everything soap-adjacent in the garbage (presumably) and replacing it all. You'd think making sure he never had the argument wouldn't make him twitchy about appearing to lose it, but there you go. Right now he's compelled to admit he's lost it. 

Natasha just says, "I've always thought so," in a tone of voice so bland she might as well give up and be smug and get it over with. 

Steve gives her a sidelong look and says, "Bucky's right. You do need a hobby." 

She doesn't dignify that with a reply.

 

Nadeen is nice. Steve does in fact enjoy meeting her. And he doesn't go to check the phone that isn't in his pocket more than once or twice. 

Per fifteen minutes, anyway. 

When they arrive, Nadeen meets them at her front door, blinks at him, stares at Natasha for a minute and then looks back at Steve to announce, brightly, "Hi. She said she was bringing a friend, she did not say who the friend was. Please forgive any flustered awkwardness while I get a handle on my new reality. You're terrible," she adds to Natasha, "please, both come in." 

Nadeen lives in the ground floor of a huge old house, the kind that used to have servants' rooms on the second or third floor. These days, the ones that are still standing are all getting turned into multiple residences, three or four or even five suites in one building. Some of them end up turned into rentals, some you can own. Steve has this nebulously victorious feeling about it that he doesn't really examine too hard. 

This one must've been done early on in the trend, because it's been apartments long enough to lose the sense of being Newly Renovated. Nadeen's is on the ground floor: a large-ish studio, big enough that there's a nice room-dividing screen hiding the bed where it's tucked in a corner, with lots of windows, nice hardwood floors and a nice wide front door. 

Somehow it's never occurred to Steve before looking around at Nadeen's place to think about how differently you'd set up living-space if your front-and-centre concern was getting a wheelchair around. And especially if you were the only one living in it, so you could just think about your own convenience and didn't have to worry much about people who moved around differently than you. 

It's not that it's _odd_ , exactly, but he supposes you could call it _unexpected_. Everything's got a place and the places all make perfect sense if he takes the second to get his perspective out of his own head and make a guess at hers, but nothing's quite where he'd expect. Especially when it comes to how high anything is. The only thing above Steve's waist when he's standing is art. Decoration. Everything useful is down low. It only makes sense, but somehow it's still unexpected. 

It's funny, Steve reflects, how this stuff can catch you. And actually now that he thinks about it, it's an interesting thing to consider - just how much the world gets arranged around a sort of bulk assumption of the "norm", so much that you'd never even think to question it until something confronts you. 

Despite the special request for forgiveness, Steve doesn't really notice any flustered, but he admittedly doesn't have anything to compare it to. Natasha takes over the kitchen to make tea and coffee, but in the kind of way that says she's done this before and it's not a big deal. 

Nadeen has a round face, olive skin and big dark eyes behind thick glasses. Her hair is black and thick, chin-length with blunt-cut bangs and she wears yoga-pants and a sweat-shirt. "I always dress for comfort," she says, as she moves her chair over to the one little area that has two arm-chairs and a low coffee-table, set aside like it's the designated living-room or social space, and after a little back and forth she's settled where a third chair would be if she didn't automatically come with her own. 

Steve glances at Natasha, because he doesn't _think_ he's showing any kind of judgement about how she looks, since he's definitely not feeling any, but she just shakes her head a little with a small smile that Steve decides to take, for now, as saying this is something Nadeen's sensitive to, or something. Maybe that counts as the flustered: assuming that someone looking at her is judging, especially an unexpectedly famous guest, and feeling the need to explain. 

"I gave up being pretty years ago," Nadeen goes on, settling herself and changing the height and angle of her chair a bit, the whole exchange of looks apparently going over her head. "It was never going to work anyway." 

It's one of those things that Steve's never sure how to respond to anymore. Not off-hand. On the one hand, instinct makes him want to tell her she is pretty, and there's definitely nothing _wrong_ with how she looks - but on the other hand, it's not that important to be pretty, and she's clearly got a lot going for her that isn't about pretty, and besides Steve's had his own thoughts about the pathological and toxic nature of the focus on beauty as related to goodness, and he doesn't know her enough to know what's going to be best for her to hear, so . . . 

"I know Steve just takes way too much sugar - you still taking yours with milk?" Natasha asks Nadeen, and Steve's just as happy to let the question take the conversation in a totally new direction. 

Steve has some honest sympathy for people who get caught up in thinking, _stuff used to be simpler_. Because he gets it: back before _you know enough_ to see the complexity, it really is easier inside your own head. He doesn't have any sympathy for people trying to believe that just because they were ignorant the world really _was_ simple, or that it's worth trying to go back. But he's got sympathy for the wistful. For the sense of "I didn't used to have so much I had to think about." 

Sometimes, it's all kind of a lot. 

"I hope you're not cold?" Nadeen asks as Steve comes over to sit down, at her invitation. "I just always have them open when I'm working." 

Steve shakes his head and says, "I hope we're not interrupting," with a glance at the mid-height table at the other end of the open space. It's covered with a very neatly organized but pretty crowded collection of bottles and jars and tools he doesn't really recognize at all, and the little area cleared for obvious work has what's obviously a half-finished project in it, with an unlabelled little dram bottle and some droppers and things. 

"Oh no," she says. "You're in my schedule. I schedule everything," she adds, with the self-aware, amused sigh of someone turning a quirk - maybe even a strange one - into a joke. "I even have a time-block set aside to reschedule the day if I got off-schedule and got mixed up. It's at three-thirty," she adds. "I have an alarm. In case I get really confused." 

There's a noise that by now Steve's pretty familiar with as "the noise of a cat waking up to find their house isn't the way it was when they went to sleep", and immediately afterwards the ugliest cat Steve has ever seen wanders in and jumps up onto her lap. 

He knows the breed is just the what's-it-called, the Sphynx, that almost-hairless cat some people have easier time with allergies around, but this one manages to look way more like some kind of angry goblin or demon-imp than a cat. Its wrinkly skin is flesh-pink except for one round brown spot in the middle of its side, and it has a notch out of each ear, in different places. Something about the proportions of its face are subtly Off to Steve, too, and it's missing one eye, the skin mostly healed over the spot. 

Steve's pretty good at cat body-language, at this point. There's a show on Animal Planet that's mostly about a guy going around explaining cats to people who own them and are having trouble, and it's enjoyable to watch because he pretty much always fixes the problem by the end of the show and unlike a lot of that kind of reality show - the kind where an expert comes in to finish something or fix something - the guy's always well-intentioned and trying to sort things out. It's like the Mike Holmes shows. They don't try to stir up extra conflict or anything. 

Granted a lot of the episodes leave you wondering why women have much to do with men, voluntarily. But it was still enjoyable. Besides, the guy's strategies often seemed to turn the men in question into at least slightly more considerate human beings. 

But all that aside, despite the fact that Steve knows full well that the cat curling up and then squeezing its eyes closed at the room while Nadeen pets it just means it's comfortable and secure in its environment - remarkably so, considering it's got at least one stranger in it - it still _looks_ like it's squinting in smug malevolence. 

"This is Max," Nadeen introduces the cat, and goes on, "I know he looks like a fiend from Hell and I know every cat person says their cat is actually just a big softy, but Max is actually just a big softy. If I was doing something that didn't let him be in my lap, he'd totally be trying to climb in yours. He loves everyone. If he rolls over in front of you he actually wants you to pet his tummy and he won't attack your hand. He's unusual like that." 

Max squints his eyes further closed and then lays his chin on her leg. 

 

Steve lets Natasha lead, mostly. She asks Nadeen about some stuff - repairs to the condo, how her friend was doing - and Nadeen asks Natasha about some things, and Natasha teases Steve about his knee-jerk reaction to New Jersey which fortunately makes Nadeen laugh a lot instead of offending her. 

"New Jersey is weird," she says. "I'm not from here. I grew up in Minneapolis. But in some ways all places are kinda the same, as long as you find the right kind of place, and I've been on this coast for a while, and this condo was really perfect just for me. The transit accessibility could be better, but there's a service I can use that has good rates, and my neighbours are really good about making sure the sidewalks are clean if it snows." 

Around ten, Natasha lets Steve have his phone back. There's one text on it, from Clint about ten minutes before, that says _kitten's out of surgery, everything's fine_ to which Steve sends a quick _thanks_ and which he then tries to believe. To try and keep with that, Steve asks Nadeen about how she got into making scented things, and how she runs her business - "Etsy," she says. "All hail Etsy." - and how it works out for her. 

That seems to be something she's really happy to talk about, thankfully. She gets animated enough that Max gives her an annoyed look and settles himself into a curl that doesn't have his chin on her leg where it gets jostled. 

She explains about scent sensitivity, and how the perfume industry as a whole ignores the subtle chemical nuances of the stuff they're chemically replicating, and the chemical interactions of smell and skin acidity and all the other stuff in your skin, not to mention the stuff in the products you use. She talks about how most people just get so inured to being constantly shouted at by smells that they stop noticing, but how humans actually have a sense of smell that responds to subtle pheromones and tiny traces, especially in and around other humans, they just don't notice. 

Natasha gets up to pour everyone more of whatever they were drinking just as Nadeen asks how the stuff Natasha got for him and Bucky is working out for them. 

"Great," Steve says, honestly, because he's now got the pretty secure feeling that his totally un-educated response is actually what she wants to hear, so he doesn't need to worry. "I don't know how you managed to get to work like that but it's really nice, it's almost like you're not wearing anything scented at all except it smells better than it would otherwise. It's hard to explain." 

"Oh good," Nadeen says, like Steve just took a big weight off her mind. "Normally I don't make stuff for people I haven't talked to because I don't get the right feeling from them, but Tasha's pretty good at identifying notes, so I decided I'd give it a shot. That's a relief." 

Steve smiles a bit crookedly. "She is pretty good at figuring things out," he agrees. 

"She's also an overbearing busy-body sometimes," Nadeen says, in the same matter of fact tone, "but mostly it's one of her better qualities and besides I figured that part was for you two to work out and I shouldn't worry about it. Oh - Tasha there's Girl Scout cookies in the cupboard," she adds, turning her head like she just remembered. 

Then she must catch some kind of surprise on Steve's face, because she adds, "Oh Natasha knows she is," as if this explains everything, including the part where she just said it out loud. "And she said she didn't mind me pointing it out." Nadeen shrugs. "She could be lying but I can't tell so I just take people's word for it when they tell me they don't mind. Sometimes they end up not liking me but if you're not going to tell me when I'm doing something annoying then I can't fix it. Especially if I actually ask. I mean if I could notice and fix it I already would have, so if I haven't then I haven't noticed and if I haven't noticed it's because I can't and that's just something I have to deal with." 

Natasha brings a plate of Thin Mints with her as she comes back, and leans over to put them on the table. "You're getting into an anxiety cycle," she points out to Nadeen, who makes a face and pets the cat on her lap, like it's displacement. 

"I am," she says. "I know. I'm going to stop now. Did you want to know what the blend _is_?" she asks Steve, who manages to put together that she's talking about the scents in the soaps, and also changing the subject. 

Steve takes the diversion, both because it's kinder and because he's also kind of curious. 

It leads to a quick tour of her entire one-woman production line, and then a talk-through ("it's like a walk through except I can't walk," Nadeen says, "- except I can, sort of, a little bit, sometimes, on a good day, but then it stops being a good day, and it isn't worth it, and I get like three bed days while all the nerve endings in my back scream at me, so _functionally_ , I can't walk - ") of her store and how it works. And, at the end, a whole bunch of business cards because Steve asks. 

He figures there are places around the neighbourhood he could pin them up, after all. Her stuff might be a bit pricey for most people to get every day, but it'd be perfect for special occasions, and in addition to her personalized stuff she's got a good spread of standard pre-made scents both as perfume and in personal care products that sound really good. 

Nadeen also gives him a little sealed paper envelope that according to her contains a sample of her new relaxation-blend in bath-salts - in a paper envelope because, she says, giving out samples like that in ziplock bags is just asking to get someone into trouble over nothing. 

 

There comes a point around noon where, at least to Steve, it looks like Nadeen's starting to visibly droop. On top of that, he thinks he might recognize a certain set to her shoulders and her jaw that says - or at least does if he's right and is recognizing that set - that she's going to ignore the part where she's visibly drooping out of some combination of stubbornness, pride, and frustration with the part where the drooping happens at all. Since it usually comes with pain - 

He glances at Natasha. And that much seems to actually make up Natasha's mind, because barely a beat after he looks at her she gently breaks into Nadeen's explanation of the perfume trade in Elizabethan England with, "Nadie, I think you're starting - " 

"I'm fading," Nadeen admits, with the same sort of blunt, one-thought-running-into-another way she says a lot of things. "I was hoping I could ignore it. And that you wouldn't notice. Even you have to miss things eventually, statistically speaking." 

"Sorry," Tasha says dryly, "I used up all my credits in that bank with missing my organization being riddled with Nazis." 

"You know that's not how it works," Nadeen says, frowning at her. 

"It's sure as hell how I'm going to make it work," Natasha retorts, and Steve covers his mouth to hide the smile when Nadeen gives her a Look. He's pretty sure she brought it up on purpose, as a way of admitting fallibility so that Nadeen could feel less ashamed of her own; he's also pretty sure that she still means it, and still knows _that's_ a messed up impossibility, no matter how paranoid she manages to be, and finally, still doesn't care. 

"But you're changing the subject," Natasha continues, and Nadeen sighs. 

"I know," she says. Steve thinks she sounds a little wistful. "This was nice, though. Thank you." 

There are all kinds of notes in there that almost make Steve reflexively hesitate. But he also can read from Natasha that it _is_ time to go, so he lets her get them moving towards the door, and thanks Nadeen sincerely for letting them visit. He also extends a hand for Max to sniff and then rubs his head behind his ears - the skin oddly soft and downy-feeling - and that seems to make Nadeen happier, too. 

 

When they're about a block away, Steve asks, "Is she as lonely as I feel like she is?" 

Natasha shrugs, her hands in the pockets of her jacket. "Yes and no," she says. "She has a lot of difficulty dealing with people. A little like James, except less severe and for a different reason. It's been her whole life, so she has a lot of defenses up and in a lot of ways doesn't know what she's missing - she's never been any other way." 

She gives Steve a wry sideways glance. "Some things she's been lucky, at least as far as you can be when you're born with part of your spine exposed and your brain wired differently than most people's. Some - not so much. She had a kind of . . . not-really-a-boyfriend, for a while, but she found out last month he's been stealing money from her. Not a lot, but that doesn't really matter." She shrugs again. "She's handling it as well as anyone could, but - " 

"He's not making trouble?" Steve asks, frowning a little, and Natasha snorts. 

"One of the ways Nadeen's lucky is her family's pretty good," she replies. "Her brother came over from Minnesota the day she found out and called, so he could sit down with her to do the break-up talk and confrontation, and the guy looks like he could be Thor's stunt double." She glances at Steve's face and then explains, "Nadeen was adopted when she was a baby - she was abandoned at a hospital under the safe haven law, and her dad was an orderly there so the adoption went through more or less as soon as possible. I doubt the not-quite-a-boyfriend _expected_ to have to deal with his soft touch target turning out to have a Viking for a brother, but that's his lookout. He hasn't been a problem."

Which is probably just as well for him, Steve thinks: being scared off by the brother is almost certainly less traumatic than if Natasha thought she needed to take a hand. 

They walk in silence for a while, before Steve can't help asking, "Exactly how _many_ people like Nadeen do you have, scattered around everywhere?"

"Fewer than Barton," Tasha replies, a little tartly. "Some. Only three of them in this half of the country - Nadeen, plus a woman who runs a dance studio in the Bronx, and a rabbi in Connecticut. Although Keyna - the dancer - might not be talking to me yet. She knew a Nadya," she elaborates, at Steve's questioning look. "There were some vague but very angry Facebook posts after anyone and everyone with a TV set found out who I was. I haven't really followed up, honestly . . . haven't been up to being yelled at in person. Believe it or not." 

"I'll make sure nobody else finds out you're not an untouchable ice fortress," Steve says, lightly. After a few more steps, Natasha tilts her head to one side. 

"I don't think that metaphor - " she starts. 

"Yeah I just kinda grabbed one off the top of the pile," Steve admits, "that one kinda got away from me. And I think that's pretty fair. I mean - obviously, Tony's yelling doesn't count," he feels compelled to add. 

"Yeah - Tony has no idea how to have emotional bonds without acting out," Natasha says, dryly. "Keyna's actually a fairly normal human being. Very different behavioural parameters." She half-smiles. "Whereas Nadeen is determinedly straight-forward, and visiting seems to do her some good." 

"Of course it does," Steve replies, thoughts going to words without much review in between. He's tireder than he thought. He _has_ managed to push all of the _stuff_ behind why they're even here, why they're doing this, firmly to the back of his mind and it's more or less working - and right at this moment he fights the urge to check the phone he knows has no new messages on it, again - but it's . . . it's a lot of work. And he can feel that work taking its toll as he doesn't manage to think through anything he's about to say before he says it. 

But he does it again and goes on, "The Black Widow likes her enough to visit. That's a big ego boost, to go along with a friend visiting." 

Natasha half-smiles again, and says, "I suppose so." This time Steve does manage to rein in his tongue, because that probably doesn't need pushing. 

There's another few beats of silence before Steve's train of thought, looking for just about anything to latch onto, goes back a bit and latches onto a remark. "Clint has a lot of - " 

"There was a handwritten note from Coulson on Barton's file," Natasha tells him, suppressing a smile. "When everything was digitized it became a note that was a picture of the original handwritten note. It forbade him from being assigned missions likely to bring him into contact with troubled youth in any way shape or form. Or single mothers with young children. Or the elderly. Those were added later," she explains. 

Steve considers this and says, "I'm having trouble thinking of what missions are left." 

"That's why it was handwritten," Tasha agrees. "So it wasn't official. It was just . . .officially non-official. As a statement of frustration. I think if Clint _could_ be the entire world's supportive bachelor uncle, he'd jump at it, honestly. He can't, so it just manifests in this erratic patchwork. He's not great at keeping up with any of them, beyond making sure they're all still okay," she notes. "Not good at doing _more_ than that. Clint's . . . very, very good at connecting with a whole lot of people just enough that he doesn't have to connect with very many people any deeper than he wants to." 

She gives him the look that says she's just told him something about Clint she'd never actually point out to anyone else, and would usually go out of her way to obscure, so nobody else could use it. Steve thinks about it as they walk, turns it over in his head. "That," he says, slowly, "would be a Hell of a defense mechanism." 

"Mmm," Tasha agrees. "And he's very, very good at it. It's hard to get around. He'll reach out and connect any time there's a chance, and he's so good at it that he can skip anything deeper. The _trick_ is cornering him enough that he has to get involved in ways he can't easily duck out of later without any guilt. To get him to let things depend on him, and for more than money, or an introduction to a guy he knows, or some other quick favour." 

Steve's pretty sure she's pointing him towards a specific thought, so he lets it spin out a bit until, kind of like a lightbulb, he thinks, and says, "Like figuring out the best compromise solution for a persistent problem, and shepherding the whole thing through to conclusion, in person." 

The look on Tasha's face is actually kind of pleased and maybe satisfied. "You're getting better at that," she says. Steve laughs, a little. 

"Yeah, soon you might not have to lead me by the nose at all," he says, a bit wryly, and then mock-dodges when she elbows him. 

"Undermining positive commentary is a bad habit when _you_ do it _too_ , Steven Grant Rogers," she informs him. "Let's go back - speaking of the Devil, Clint says the fuzzball's out of observation and they're leaving." 

 

They find Clint sitting on the wall in front of the building, teaching Mercedes and Hannah a sleight-of-hand trick with a coin. Steve thinks about what Natasha just finished telling him, about Clint and connection, and he can kind of see it, even right here. Zoom in, teach the girls something, it's rewarding for everyone, and then . . . gone again, without the "gone" part being a problem for anyone. 

Clever trick, really, and even if you get lonely - just go out and make another friend. For a while. 

Steve's a bit distracted, so he totally falls for it when Clint appears to flick him the coin with a _hey, look who isn't dead yet_ call of recognition - moves to catch it, except there's nothing to catch, and Clint's holding up the coin, grinning. 

"You're hilarious," Steve tells him, summoning up some kind of Put Upon as Hannah notices it's not just him, but Natasha as well, and her eyes get wide while she steps slightly behind Mercedes. Sometimes she reminds Steve of a feral cat herself, wary and ready to hide under the nearest bed. He's honestly kind of curious how long it took Clint to get her to come out of her shell enough that Mercedes felt comfortable hanging around to learn the magic trick. 

"I know," Clint says, contentedly. 

Steve says hellos to Mercedes and to Hannah and Hannah tentatively says something about needing to go do homework which Mercedes picks up on, both of them saying good-bye and disappearing into the building. 

"Great kids," Clint remarks, in Russian that has a slightly different accent than either Natasha's or Bucky's. And then he asks, "What's up with the skittish one?" which explains why he's done the language switch. It's a pretty reasonable assumption that neither girl speaks it. 

Steve shakes his head a little, shrugs. "Abusive dad, some kind," he says. "Her mother's in jail, she lives with her grandmother, she ran away to get there when she was about eleven. Never pressed further than that, and they're not in a hurry to share." 

"I'd go with _very_ abusive," Clint says, soberly. Natasha gives him a thoughtful look and he shrugs. "Ten minutes," he says, "and it was even odds whether Mercedes was going to have them both stick around long enough for her to relax there, honestly. That girl is _very_ scared of adult men - white ones, anyway, maybe race'd make a difference maybe not. You could watch for if it ever comes up when Wilson's around." 

Steve realizes _ten minutes_ is the answer to his speculation about how long it took Clint to get Hannah to relax, and yeah - that's a long time. People usually warm up to Clint a lot faster than that, especially if he's trying. 

"She's nervy around everyone," Steve offers. "Mostly as far as I've ever seen, though, it's just like she's afraid she's going to embarrass herself - _really_ afraid, mind you," he acknowledges. "But - " 

Clint gives him a patient look. "Steve," he says, solemnly, "you're Captain America. That makes the answer to both sides of that _of course_." 

Steve makes a face at him, and Natasha snickers - it's definitely a snicker. "Yeah well," Steve says, pretending to be aloof. "Her grandmother's a very nice lady, and yeah, Mercedes and their other friend, LeAnn, look out for her. They own their place and she's in a handful of programs, I know that, and I think they're still considering getting a dog." 

"Probably be good for her," Clint agrees. "Speaking of," and he gestures towards the window, "fuzzball is fine, everything went text-book, vet had a look at her teeth and her eyes and other stuff while the going was good and there's nothing to be concerned about. She's got stitches on her belly, vet said to watch her for trying to chew on them and if it starts to be a problem give her a call since she didn't figure a cone of shame was the best answer - one of those little plastic - " 

"I saw _Up_ ," Steve interrupts, but as politely as he can. "Yeah." 

"She should be fine, probably be a bit dozy all night and shouldn't have lights on too much, there's one dose of morphine in a little syringe in a brown paper bag in the kitchen she'll probably need sometime around bedtime, everything was pretty uneventful, that's about it." Clint shrugs. 

"Thank you," Steve says, and then after about thirty seconds trying to think of something succinct and not stupid or mawkish to say and totally failing, he gives up and admits he's too tired, and says, "and thank you," with more weight on the words. "For all of it. I mean that." 

Clint actually gives Natasha a wry sideways glance - which she blandly ignores - before briefly gripping Steve's shoulder, something between a squeeze and a clap that conveys a lot. The corner of his mouth turns up. "Believe it or not," he says, "I actually do understand just how much today's sucked for you." 

"Hell," Steve says, trying to force a half laugh. He knows it doesn't work very well. Like so often, both knowing something's over and acknowledging the work come with the weight of it settling like a fucking ton on his bones. "'Day'. It's barely noon." 

"Six hours is a day," Clint says, firmly. "Trust me. I'd say go have a drink but it's a waste of time, so go . . . do something else. It's fine - I just came out here to wait," he says, dropping his volume slightly, "so James would stop fucking trying to be some kind of polite host or something." 

Steve resists the urge to put his face in his hands. "Yeah," he acknowledges, ruefully. "Yeah, that'd be - something, a thing - " 

"Steve," Natasha interrupts, her own kind of firm. The quiet kind. "Go home. Call it a day. Talk to you later." 

"You know," Steve says, and it's a bit of an automatic defense mechanism, "Nadeen's not entirely wrong - " 

"I'll stop doing it," Natasha cuts him off, sweetly, "when you stop needing it. I don't have to fuss around Sam, do I?" And Clint coughs to pretend he's hiding a laugh. 

Steve gives up and goes inside. 

 

It is like weight settling right onto his bones. Including guilt: because he should've been more confident everything would be fine, he should trust more, believe more, because post-facto something tries to twist around so that worry about Bucky having to go through something going wrong turns into having worried he'd do something wrong, which it wasn't, and isn't, and isn't how it goes, but . . . well. That's how it goes, afterwards. 

Steve kinda wishes he could have a drink, that there was a point. On the other hand, it's probably better that there isn't. 

He hangs up his jacket in the cupboard, kicks his shoes off. Calls, "Hey," into the condo and isn't that surprised when he doesn't get an answer. 

The futon's flattened out and Bucky's lying on it, on his side, curled up. Probably because that way he can compromise: the kitten can be there, also curled up, asleep. And he can see her, and rest his right hand along-side her head so she knows he's there and doesn't start whining and trying to crawl _on_ him. Steve thinks that might be too much - not sure why, but he does. 

Bucky doesn't have a shirt on, and he's tense the way he gets half the time when he doesn't have one on and it's not for a reason. It's a kind of tension it took Steve all the way until recently to notice - and maybe that's a good sign, maybe he's getting to notice nowadays because some other kinds have stopped being so utterly God-damned habitual. But it's there. And these days Steve notices. 

He believes Bucky, that it never happened to him, even if Steve does sometimes _now_ have a subtle kind of bad dream where he finds out that or something else he's believed isn't true and finds out how much he's been doing wrong. But seeing as rape is kind of common as a traumatic experience, right up there with combat, trying to learn just about anything about trauma means you come across stuff about it a lot. 

So by now Steve can't not notice that actually, a lot of the ways Bucky is about clothes, about being seen, people looking at him, what they can see, about attention . . . has a lot in common with the descriptions of how rape victims sometimes get, about the same things. 

He supposes it's probably not surprising. It probably makes sense. Just because it's not that thing, that kind of violation in particular - there was sure as Hell every other fucking kind of physical, bodily violation you could think of. And it was still all about that, the body, _his_ body and what it could do, what they could use it for. And being able to see it, to make best use of it. 

Steve doesn't know what to do with that kind of thinking, what to do with the fact that he knows that. Noticed that. There's . . . nothing obvious. 

Other than maybe knowing how bad the sensory stuff has to be, to make it the better choice. Or maybe wonder if - 

He stops himself. 

He wants there to be something he can do right now, something that'll fix it, but he doesn't actually think there is anything. Is pretty sure this is right at that crux where comfort doesn't work - where it's not bad enough that anything's better, or near enough, but there's no space yet where the twisted up can let go and start unwinding. 

Steve's pretty sure, in fact, that he's right where he kinda hates being, which is where the best thing he can do is . . . get on with normal things. But whether or not he hates it . . . 

He goes to put a kettle on and make a list. 

 

It's a few hours later and Steve's done a bunch of different stuff. He's looked at some files and answered questions Matías sent him, and he's answered some questions from Nadia the history grad-student (currently revising her dissertation and, Steve suspects, stressed beyond belief); he cleaned the bathroom and emptied the cat-box and scrubbed it out with bleach, refilled it. He's taken the garbage out and emptied the dishwasher. 

Now he's loading stuff into the laundry machine when he looks up, and Bucky's standing in the doorway to the laundry nook. 

He's holding the brown paper bag he brought home. His jaw's tight, and his right arm is wrapped around his ribs, and he's looking at the floor, not Steve. 

Before Steve can _ask_ , Bucky says, "Oral opiate painkiller," in terse, bitten-off Russian. "Liquid. She needs it. I can't do it." 

Steve's thoughts are kind of like those little weird tea-pearls Tasha showed him once, bundled and rolled up tiny and crumpled and then you drop them in the water and they unfold and expand from this tiny kernel into something that covers half the surface of the mug: painkillers, there's no way the stuff tastes good, and besides you'd want to get it all into her and she's long past the point of nursing and sucking being easy and even when she ate that way she still got stuff all over the place, and that basically means oral liquid painkiller is going to be in a little syringe (Clint mentioned that, didn't he?) that you stick down her throat to administer whether she likes it or not, and she's pretty much guaranteed not to, so - 

Damn. 

Steve lets the laundry go, closes the door to the machine enough to get it out of the way. Holds his hand out for the bag in a way that's more just . . . making it clear he'll take it if Bucky gives it to him, saying Bucky _can_ give it to him, than demanding it. He watches Bucky's face, trying to assess where exactly this all is. 

The part where Bucky _won't_ look at him actually makes that easier. If . . .more concerning, when it comes to what conclusions he gets to. Damn, again. 

"Can you stay here?" Steve asks, quietly, and hopes that . . . works, as far as the question goes. That he doesn't have to get more specific: _can you_ not _watch me force-feed your cat medication?_ Because that'd be better, Steve thinks. A lot better. And if it can just be . . . _stay here_ , if Steve doesn't actually have to say _can you be somewhere else_. That'd be . . . better. If it can. 

He almost winces, bracing himself for the answer that isn't going to be the better one - but the hesitation before Bucky nods, a short tight jerk of his head, is brief. He gives Steve the bag and stays exactly where he is, taking up a little more than half of the doorway, left arm dropped and right arm right where it was, staring straight through the floor. So the answer is _yes_ , it's just . . . really specifically yes. He can stay exactly right there. Like that. 

Steve does not want to think about how fucking impressive this all is, honestly. This is exactly the kind of time when those kinds of thoughts just fucking pall. 

Abrikoska's curled up in the little cat-bed in the bedroom, but makes a really unhappy mewing sound the second Steve pushes the door the rest of the way open - one like he hasn't heard for a while now, since she was _really_ small and Bucky was putting her down when she really didn't want to be. Which, her making that noise but not getting up is probably a pretty good indicator for being in pain. As far as cats ever give you any sign. 

The whole thing's easier than Steve was worried it would be: he just has to get hold of her head and use a thumb to gently pry her mouth open, and then squirt what's a pretty small dose down her throat. But she also reacts more dramatically than he expected, enough that for a second he's worried that he did something wrong while she paws at her face and rubs it on the cat-bed. In the end, though, he decides she's just _being_ dramatic; she moves on to grooming her tail ferociously, and within about a minute, maybe less, she's more mobile and less pathetic-looking than she had been. 

Steve wraps the syringe back up in the paper bag and then detours to drop that in the kitchen garbage, pushing it down under the other stuff before washing his hands. 

Bucky's still standing where he was, but Steve wasn't expecting anything else. He says, _hey_ , softly, reaching over to put a hand on Bucky's left shoulder and then slide it over to his right, leaning in towards him. "Hey," he says again. "She's fine. C'mere?" 

He keeps it a definite question; the answer's mostly in the fact that Bucky lets his torso start to turn, just a fraction - away from the door, towards Steve. Means Steve feels confident letting his hand drop to take Bucky's left hand - hand, not wrist, not forearm - and pull a bit towards the bedroom. 

Just a bit. 

He stops just inside - they stop, because Steve can feel just bare hesitation, feel the point where Bucky gets a fraction less willing to take another step. 

Says _hey_ , again, when Bucky still won't look at him - but Bucky doesn't shift or flinch when Steve goes to touch his shoulder again, facing him this time, so Steve lets his hand rest there for a minute and then pushes Bucky's hair back from his face. Cradles the back of his head and guides him to rest his forehead against Steve's. 

Behind them the kitten complains, probably because Bucky's standing up and not petting her. But it's her normal complaint, the normal grumbling of a vocal cat, not the noise she'd been making before. Better. 

"It's okay," Steve says. And since she's gone and spoke up about it, adds, "She's okay. It's okay." 

It's a few seconds, a couple breaths, before Bucky's right arm releases a bit, stops being wrapped so tightly around himself and drops. Before he rests his left hand on Steve's upper arm, holding on on rather than pushing away. 

"C'mere," Steve says. He kisses Bucky's forehead, says, "C'mere, come lie down." 

Every movement's a kind of halting-stiff, half like Bucky expects it to _stop_ being okay any second, and half like he's so tense it can't be otherwise, and that . . . pretty much sums it up, Steve supposes. He gets Bucky to lie on his right side, facing the door and the silly cat's bed, and she at least has the good manners not to make Steve have to pick her up and move her - just pads over the minute she seems to hear and smell or otherwise sense that Bucky's settled. Whatever it is she does. 

It takes more time than makes Steve happy before Bucky apparently believes he's allowed to actually touch her, but on the plus side she spends that time emphatically burrowing up against his shoulder and the space up beside his throat, which probably puts paid to any lingering feelings that she's holding a grudge or anything. She's even happy enough to sniff Steve's hand and let him pet her ears, so that's not going to be a problem either. 

Steve sits beside Bucky on the bed and pulls out his sketchbook, doodles a bit for a while. He experiments with trying to draw the couch in the living-room from memory instead of reference, folding down the corner of the page to remind himself to compare sometime tomorrow or the next day. 

He sketches until Bucky relaxes enough to roll half onto his back, and then all the way, wincing and bringing the kitten with him to put on his stomach. She crawls up to curl up between his jaw and his shoulder instead, half-sliding off but still resting her head and paws against his shirt and skin. 

Bucky's jaw is still tight. Steve puts the sketchbook aside and waits. 

"I want to tell you you should fucking shoot me," Bucky says, and it's in English. "But I don't want to hear any of the fucking smart-ass fucking answers you have." 

Steve suppresses half a smile. "We can skip it," he says, mildly. 

"I feel like shit," Bucky says, carefully. "And I'm fucking pissed off that I feel like shit. Pissed off and - other fucking . . .stuff." He swallows, and doesn't seem to have anywhere to go from there. 

Steve shifts so he can lie down beside him, and fishes his phone out of his pocket. He finds the recorded lecture on the _Iliad_ and queues it up. "Just go to sleep," he advises. "Or listen to this guy have opinions about Hector. Nothing else you need to do." He reaches over Bucky to put the phone on the bedside table.

Bucky catches his arm, as Steve starts to pull it back, and pulls it down to rest across Bucky's ribs instead. So Steve settles, to keep it there. 

Nothing else he really needs to do, either. 

 

Steve orders pizza and coaxes Bucky into eating it. Then he convinces Bucky to have a bath with him more or less by the expedient of moving the cat-bed into the bathroom and tucking it up against the sink. Abrikoska's happy enough to be relocated, and goes back to sleep. Like most people would after surgery, and on the equivalent amount of morphine. 

Steve's not sure what all the not-overpowering smells in the bath-salts are, because he didn't read the packet before he tossed them in, just checked to make sure there wasn't anything aggravating. Mostly to him they smell kind of warm, and kind of clear at the same time. Bucky relaxes slowly in the skin-reddening water, fraction by fraction, and the cat just sleeps. 

It's probably kind of amazing how . . . normal, really, most of today was. Steve's not in a position where he can appreciate that, not really. Can't _feel_ it. But the thought's still there, the shape of it. All of this - you could at least describe it, without precise detail, and it'd sound . . . normal. 

More importantly, it's all okay. More or less. For their version of okay. 

Steve ducks his head to kiss Bucky's temple, settle a little more into the water and let Bucky settle against him skin and skin and metal and both of them there. Bucky's inhale is a little deeper, and his right arm rests over Steve's, where Steve's is around his waist. 

It'll do.


End file.
